It feels a bit weird to still be counting days in lockdown but since it seems working from home is here to stay and we're not really out of it yet I'm going to carry on. So Wednesday 3 June was day 78...

Our idiot government has screwed up the whole lockdown with their treatment of #Cummingsgate - looking around my neighbourhood everything seems to be back to normal other than the pubs and shops not being open. Neverthess we now have a higher death rate than the whole of Europe put together (British exceptionalism at its best again).

I'm keeping a wary eye on things - still social distancing down at the allotment, zipping in and out of garden centre/DIY store when I visit and minimising shopping trips. Haven't seen friends since March - and still no plans for meeting.

Work continues - though I have found it difficult to feel motivated about anything (work or personal stuff that needs to be done) this week.

I'm doing a short work day (Thursday) as I'm zipping off with another car load of recycling/rubbish to the tip at 3pm. Bringing order back to casa chaotica is a battle I'm slowly winning. I should finish potting up the last few houseplants today, and maybe the pots and windowboxes outside the kitchen. Must also find out if local launderette is open as I am seriously running out of clean clothes.

This evening I have some life admin to do - email the insurer's about the potentially double paid hospital invoice from last year, finish assembling pension info to send to my IFA, do some reconcilation around budgets/finances, and a whole lot of scanning, sorting, shredding of allotment soc papers and overall admin.

I bit the bullet and adulted properly yesterday (Wednesday). We have the option twice a year to increase pension contributions into our work pension scheme - it's a pretty good one. I currently pay in 7% of my gross salary and my employer puts in 12.25%. After running some numbers I'm upping my contribution to 12.75% which means a solid 25% of my gross salary will go to my pension and paying by salary sacrifice saves me a bit on tax and national insurance too.

Once the IFA has reviewed my pension situation I can either up the contributions further in January 2021 or look at private pensions. The other thing I want to do before the end of the year is find a good stocks and shares ISA. I've been doing some research and have started to narrow down the options.

In more fannish related news I may have started on a rewatch of Stargate SG1 which I'm fitting in around watching other more current shows. There's something about returning to an old much loved fandom for a bit of escapism. I've also promised ravurian that I will watch Hollywood and then next on the list to binge watch are Westworld S3 and Defending Jacob, This entry was originally posted at https://ruric.dreamwidth.org/711655.html.